Table of Contents

United States Southern Cities in 1870 and 1880: A Study of Individuals and Families (ICPSR 7568)

Principal Investigator(s):
Goldin, Claudia

Summary:

This data collection contains individual-level and
family-level information collected from the 1870 and 1880 manuscript
schedules of the United States Population Census for seven Southern
cities: Charleston, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia, Atlanta,
Georgia, Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, Norfolk, Virginia, and
New Orleans, Louisiana. Approximately 5,000 individuals and 1,500
families are represented for each of the two census years
studied. Part 1 contains data for 1870, and Part 2 contains data for
1880. The data gathered for sampled individuals include age, sex,
race, marital status, presence of health defect, school attendance,
ability to read, ability to write, occupational classification (female
and male), nationality, and real and personal wealth (for 1870
only). Both datasets include a variable that uniquely identifies each
family in the sample to facilitate the aggregation of the data for the
creation of family-level data for each member, e.g., sex, race, age,
marital status, school attendance, member status in the family,
occupation, health, unemployment, city of residence, nationality and
parents' nationality, and real and personal wealth.

This data collection contains individual-level and
family-level information collected from the 1870 and 1880 manuscript
schedules of the United States Population Census for seven Southern
cities: Charleston, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia, Atlanta,
Georgia, Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, Norfolk, Virginia, and
New Orleans, Louisiana. Approximately 5,000 individuals and 1,500
families are represented for each of the two census years
studied. Part 1 contains data for 1870, and Part 2 contains data for
1880. The data gathered for sampled individuals include age, sex,
race, marital status, presence of health defect, school attendance,
ability to read, ability to write, occupational classification (female
and male), nationality, and real and personal wealth (for 1870
only). Both datasets include a variable that uniquely identifies each
family in the sample to facilitate the aggregation of the data for the
creation of family-level data for each member, e.g., sex, race, age,
marital status, school attendance, member status in the family,
occupation, health, unemployment, city of residence, nationality and
parents' nationality, and real and personal wealth.

Access Notes

Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.
Please log in so we can determine if you are with a member institution and have
access to these data files.

This study is provided by ICPSR.
ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis
for a diverse and expanding social science research community.

Study Description

Citation

Goldin, Claudia. United States Southern Cities in 1870 and 1880: A Study of Individuals and Families. ICPSR07568-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2002. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07568.v1

In each file, Variables 1-4, 25, and 60 are for
identification. Variables 5-24 pertain to the over 10,000 individuals
and are presented basically as provided by the principal
investigator. Variables 25-59 pertain to the over 3,000 families and
were created by ICPSR staff by aggregating or redefining the
individual-level data into composite variables for the entire family,
or for the head only as the representative of the family. The
individual and family data were then merged, producing the two final
files. Both files have the same number of variables with identical
numbering. Comparable variables for the two years were calculated with
identical methods. If data existed for one year and not the other, a
dummy variable was inserted as a placeholder for the year without
data.

The principal investigator and ICPSR wish to emphasize that
the 35 family-level variables included here are not meant to be the
only composite variables that could be created. Each researcher may
find it necessary to create additional variables specific to his or
her particular research project. These family-level variables are
intended to assist researchers in their preliminary analyses of these
data, and may be used or enlarged upon at the discretion of each
researcher.

Methodology

Sample:
One out of every 50 pages of the 1870 and 1880 manuscript
censuses for Charleston, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia, Atlanta,
Georgia, Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, and Norfolk, Virginia,
and one out of every 200 pages for New Orleans, Louisiana, were
sampled to gather the individual-level data.

Data Source:

The 1870 and 1880 manuscript schedules of the United
States Population Census

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 1984-06-28

Version History:

2006-01-18 File CB7568.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.